Bloomberg

Bloomberg | Quint is a multiplatform, Indian business and financial news company. We combine Bloomberg’s global leadership in business and financial news and data, with Quintillion Media’s deep expertise in the Indian market and digital news delivery, to provide high quality business news, insights and trends for India’s sophisticated audiences.

U.S. Metal Makers Retreat as Traders Rethink Trump Tariffs Plan

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. metal producers retreated a day after surging on the Trump administration’s tariff plan as questions mounted over whether import limits will deliver the intended benefits.

U.S. Steel Corp. and Nucor Corp., the largest U.S. steelmaker, paced losses on the Bloomberg Americas Iron/Steel Index. Among aluminum companies, Chicago-based Century Aluminum Co. and Kaiser Aluminum Corp. also recoiled.

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he plans to place a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum, sparking the ire of domestic manufacturers and trade partners in China and Europe. A broader selloff in stocks underscored concerns over the economic impact of the move, suggesting gains for U.S. metal producers may not be clear cut, and that Trump faces pushback as he attempts to fill in details of the action.

“There’s disbelief that this actually goes through in its current form, given backlash from members of Congress, economists, and the decline in the stock market yesterday,” Lee McMillan, a steel analyst at Clarksons Platou Securities Inc., said by telephone. “The other concern is about demand destruction.”

The tariff levels “are the intent,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said after Trump’s announcement, with details of the action still to be written.

U.S. Steel fell as much as 6.1 percent, a day after climbing 5.8 percent. The stock was down 3.9 percent at 11:39 a.m. in New York. Charlotte, North Carolina-based Nucor fell 1.6 percent, and Century slid as much as 4.5 percent before recovering. On Thursday, Nucor and Century jumped 3.3 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively. Gerdau SA, the Brazil-based company that produces more than 40 percent of its steel in North American mills, lost as much as 5.8 percent.

The drops extend gyrations from Thursday that came as markets awaited an expected announcement on the tariffs. U.S. aluminum and steel stocks jumped, stumbled then surged again as Trump confirmed plans to slap on the tariffs in one of his toughest actions yet to implement a hawkish trade agenda.

McMillan said there also may be scope for metal-consuming industries in the U.S. to work around the tariffs. One way could be by buying finished metal goods, which aren’t affected by the tariffs, instead of raw materials, defeating the purpose of helping the domestic metals industries, he said.

“The simple idea is that steel becomes more expensive,” he said “Imports of products made of steel become relatively more attractive than they were before, because their price doesn’t change. Think in terms of a steel widget: if most people believe price of steel is going up, then the price of the widget would go up, but the foreign widget wouldn’t go up in price.”